In my Report #8, dated December 20, 1993, concerned with the
impacts of increasing student fees, I looked into a question that
had previously been obscured: What is the per-student cost of
undergraduate instruction at UC? The UC President’s Office has used
the figure $12,168 as the full cost of instruction in 1991-92,
averaging all General Campus instruction over all students. In my
analysis, I separated the undergraduate portion from the graduate
portion and found a current cost of $5,040 per-student per-year for
undergraduate education (covering “tuition plus fees”), noting that
this figure was less than one-half of the amount claimed by the UC
administration. This raised a fundamental challenge to the
University’s current plans and financial policies, affecting not
only the level of undergraduate student fees but also the future
support of faculty research and graduate education.</p>
<p>The most often used measure of educational quality is the
Student/Faculty Ratio. The Office of the President says UC’s ratio
is 18.6, while its four public comparison schools average 17.8 and
its four private comparison schools average 10.4. Here, again, I
say one should separate undergraduate students from graduate
students in calculating Student/Faculty Ratios. Using data provided
by UCOP and CPEC I have calculated the following:</p>
<p>Table 1. Ratio of Undergraduate Students to Faculty</p>
<p>University of California 15.1
Average of 4 Public Comparison Universities 12.9
Average of 4 Private Comparison Universities 5.0</p>
<pre><code> The huge difference between the top and the bottom numbers in
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<p>this Table has its historical roots in the mission of the public
universities to educate large numbers of undergraduates, while the
elite private research universities (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale)
have kept their undergraduate classes small. By this measure an
undergraduate education at the elite private universities is far
richer, and thus the far higher tuitions they charge may be
justified. Conversely, UC (and the other public universities)
cannot justify anything close to those sky-high fees; and UC even
looks somewhat worse than the comparison public universities.<br>
(Looking at graduate students only, the ratio is rather close among
all these schools; and this reflects the real basis for the
selection of comparison institutions.)</p>
<pre><code> This new data casts further doubt upon the moral legitimacy,
</code></pre>
<p>and even upon the marketability, of higher undergraduate fees at UC.